


The stalker and the alchemist

by COURIER_COMMANDER



Series: A stalkers memoirs [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:15:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/COURIER_COMMANDER/pseuds/COURIER_COMMANDER
Summary: This started as a short background segment for a character I was going to play in a friends Drsden files roleplaying game, he also let me borrow his dresden files booksI got carried away as I was writing and it kind of spiraled off into it's own thing partly thanks to a conversation I had had with another friend earlier that dayI may revisit thisAny and all feedback is appreciated
Series: A stalkers memoirs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063100





	The stalker and the alchemist

There was no good way to hold Mortimer during the transformation, hold the gun in the centre or the end of the barrel and after the shift your hand would be gripping the sharp blade of a bastard sword, if you held the gun at the butt of the stock and you would find yourself awkwardly holding onto the hilt of a weapon that now had a very different balance, it was tricky at the best of times and this was anything but

I decided that adding further bloodloss to my situation was not the best idea so I wiped the blood off of my left hand onto my now ruined shirt, my right arm limp at my side. I placed the butt of Mortimers stock in my hand and placed the barrel at the ground and tapped it against the carpet twice, the space between the taps was filled by me ushering a phrase, a language I didn’t understand and I didn’t even understand what I was saying but the little bastard who thrust Mortimer onto me told me the phrase, at my command Mortimer radiated with a sharp heat that was accompanied by a blinding purple light blocking it from view, when the light faded the Ithaca 37 shotgun that had been in my hand had been replaced with a practical sword bare of decoration, feeling woozy I had not adjusted my grip properly and the sword fell to the ground producing a loud crash as it did

I took off my shirt and threw it onto the floor, I made my way over from my door to my bedside cabinet where I kept a healthy supply of bandages, my right arm left a consistent trail of blood as I made my way across what felt like Ben Nevis

Say what you want about the dumpster fire that had become my life but I had certainly learnt how to apply bandages, when I started this little venture my bandaging was sloppy and loose, after a few months of bandaging myself at least once a week I had really learnt what I was doing and I doubt you could push a knife blade into the space between my skin. It was an actual skill and felt like more than the education that was costing me over nine grand a year

After taking a moment to admire my work I made my way over to my desk and sat in my swivel chair, well it used to be my big sisters chair but now it was mine. _time to call the doctor_ I thought to myself _man, things are starting to get weird_

‘starting’ who was I kidding? I turned and stared at the very first drop of blood I left in this apartment, by now it was dried and a very dull brown, but four months will do that, it started to get weird then, now all this insanity was normal

I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out my phone, I didn’t tend to take it with me when I went stalking, it added an unpredictable angle, I didn’t have many advantages but the element of surprise was one of them and sometimes I forget to turn my phone on silent, not worth the risk

I dialled in the number manually, I didn’t need to since she was the first name in my contact list, the number was also my first speed dial so the manual input was just showing off, the one number I have ever memorised so I was damn sure gonna show it

She didn’t pick up, well fuck, I was out of the salve I use to keep infection out of the wound and when you hunted the things I did, well I had seen first-hand what happens to people who don’t get treatment and it wasn’t pretty

Its a shame there wasn’t a shot for this stuff, a lot of people made a living doing what I did, stalking we call it, finding the things that lurk in the shadows and removing them, it’s a kind of pest control I guess, just one with a very high risk factor, all kinds of things can leave toxin and venom in their victims if they break the skin and my still bleeding arm had eight points of entry, if someone at the markets could come up with some kind of vaccine that could protect against the various effects there would have been a lot of money in that

Of course that would have upset the local ‘authorities’ who felt that magic and technology should be kept separate, I’d seen those guys pull apart the stall where I ‘obtained’ Mortimer, in fact for some of their more extreme members the very fact that I carry a magical sword that also takes the form of a twentieth century shotgun made me suspect, luckily I was protected by the stalkers oath, I protected both the supernatural and mundane population from the shadows and thus I was protected, in theory at least, if I went around emptying shells into members of said populations things would change but I never turned my gun on humans unless I was contracted, I only thought about doing it on my bad days

The point of my ramble is you either knew an alchemist who could use the old ways to protect you from contamination or you didn’t, I did but she wasn’t picking up, she was probably still mad I bailed on her at the cinema the previous week, in fairness if you had seen a three-legged American bulldog oozing Black fog from its body walking around In Broad daylight going to see the latest rom com wouldn’t seem like a priority to you either

I wanted to ignore it and just have a good time with my friend even if she didn’t believe me, I wanted to pretend I could stop seeing what lived in the shadows but I couldn’t, ever since someone talked me into taking a hit new drug, I always saw them, always and it made me feel so damn powerless, I couldn’t sleep most nights at the beginning

I wasn’t like most stalkers who were supernatural beings themselves, people who were born able to see into the dark and were born with skills to combat it, I was just Davey Simms, a mundane mortal whose sight had been awakened artificially, the only time I felt safe was when I had Mortimer in my hands, whether sword or gun with him I was worth something, I was a stalker. In the mundane world I was just called Davey or worse Davey boy, at the markets I was ‘Mr Simms' so yeah rushing to my dorm and grabbing my gun so I could pursue and stop the demon dog walking around in Broad daylight was more important than having fun, sue me

I didn’t have means of protecting myself from supernatural infection but there were ways I could protect myself from the mundane kind, I was this close to grabbing my lighter and trying to seal the wound with the flame when my phone began to buzz and play the song “if I can’t have you" presumptuous but she would never find out

Everyone on my phone had a personal ringtone so I would know who was ringing me, I never answered unknown numbers since I had a separate phone for clients, when I first started out Stalking some of the other lads suggested it was good to get my name out there so I got some cards made _Davey Simms professional stalker_. Trust me the guy who made the cards giggled harder than you are now. I put them on the boards at the markets just like the other stalkers, along with a phone number from a cheap phone I got for free at the market for buying extra shotgun shells, it was my one rule, I wanted to keep my life as a stalker and my life as a student separate, I was pretty shitty at said rule

I picked up the phone and there came the voice of Laney Wilson, one of two people who knew my secret, I could hear the latest club mix pumping in the background, great I was interrupting girl’s night

“just tell me you aren’t bleeding" her voice was strong and direct, just the way I liked it, I looked down on my desk, shortly after our friendship began Laney had given me a 'joke gift'

At least she claimed it was a joke but the contents itself suggested otherwise, it was a post-it note

_NEVER_ _LIE TO ME AGAIN!_

_ LANEY! _

All caps with three lines underlined and two separate words punctuated with exclamation marks, I could practically hear her screaming it at me every time I looked at it

“I'm bleeding Wilson" I told myself that if I used her surname that meant I wasn’t in love with her, I was full of shit

“christ! What was it this time?”

“A canine like thing" I paused, like most things that lived in the dark this was hard to describe because it looked vaguely like an animal of the mundane world but distorted, a lot of these things had names and books about them but they weren’t cheap and I had to mentor who could teach me the ways of the Stalk, I was winging it “but it had no ears or nose, aside from its eyes the face was smooth, devoid of features, it was lean and moved quickly, seemed like it wasn’t really moving on its legs but floating with its paws just grazing the ground”

“OK, sounds kinda like that thing from last month so it shouldn’t be too bad" I remembered that little shit, it was a lot smaller and not much as a challenge, I got cocky though and it nipped my leg, not all of the shadow beasts are infectious but this thing was, Laney hadn’t got to me in time and when she found me I was jumping around my room with Mortimer in sword form slashing around at invisible enemies, nothing too, bad just some hallucinations

“nah this was a big bastard, and had four fangs on each jaw” I heard her muffle some curse words on her end

“how bad is it, and just be honest” I thought about cracking wise but I could feel the heat coming off of the post-it note

“Not bad enough to do permanent damage but it got all it’s fangs in me before I could get it off” I stared at the four puddles of blood on my four arm and rolled it over to see four more puddles on the other side “I have got eight deep puncture marks that are still producing blood, I probably need to change the bandages” I could hear a heavy sigh on the end of the line, guess it doesn’t matter if you are joking or not when you are bleeding, either way you will have loved one drying their eyes and claiming its the rain

“Gods you are a fuck nugget, what’s this even worth to you?”

“this particular one was worth nine grand when I turned it heads in to the union” I could feel the smile on my face “if I had direct contact to my client then I’d have made ten but the union has to have it’s cut" if I needed a reason to do what I did beyond the fact that I enjoyed it or that it just felt like the right thing to do then money was it, I had signed up with the union three months ago and spent the bulk of my nightlife on that, there weren’t too many local stalkers so sometimes I got contacted directly by a client but I made most of my money with the union and was happy to do it, they were good people

Anyway, the point is that even at this time I had enough saved up to pay my three years uni debt, well that’s if I didn’t just pack it in and go full-time Stalker, I was probably gonna end up doing that, I saw more future there then as a writer, it was fulfilling, paid well and I only came close to death a handful of times

“OK fuck nugget I’m on my way, I just need to grab some gear, but it’s getting pretty late so could I spend the night?”

I fell out of my chair and not because of the blood loss, Wilson staying the night? My head ran with a billion scenarios most of which involved me being tighed to the bed _christ Davey get a grip_ I thought, _she just needs somewhere to stay and as her friend you are going to support her... as a friend and nothing else you perv_

“yeah, sure thing Wilson, I can sleep on the pull-out couch, beds all yours"

“Thanks, I’ll be there in 20, 30 tops, and David?" now I was just getting bothered, no one called me David, it wasn’t even my name, my birth certificate read Davey Simms and if anyone else called me that there would be hell to pay, but when Laney said it there was something about it, she made it sound possessive and stirred things up in me most stalkers would be ashamed of _get a grip you degenerate_

“yeah? What is it?”

“you better not be passed out when I get there like last time" then she hung up and I was alone well, alone with Mortimer

Speaking of him I’m sure he wasn’t enjoying the view down there, I picked him up and placed him on my bed, I grabbed the cloth I kept in my desk drawer and gave him a quick polish, then I placed him on the rack I keep above my bed, most people found it weird or dangerous that I kept a sword on my bed but like I said he helped me sleep and the closer he was the better

I put on my Spotify play list and then changed my blood-soaked bandages wile I waited for Laney, the bleeding wasn’t as severe but it hadn’t stopped, this was a bad one, I had never seen a beast quite like this before, size of a great Dane and the speed of a whippet, could have easily been my throat the thing found instead of my arm

I got through three songs before there was a knock on the door, hail to the king by avenged sevenfold, fuck you by ce lo green and uptown girl, the original of course even a zoomer has standards, I was part way through the fourth song hollaback girl by Gwen Stefani when the knock came, I just seemed to accrue all sorts on my Spotify, either way less than four songs meant she had taken less than 15 minutes to get from the club, to wherever her gear was to me, I didn’t deserve her then and its no different now

Laney Wilson did not dress like a girl, Laney Wilson did not act like a girl and she certainly didn’t talk like one, she had come from the club and even there she wasn’t wearing a dress, black leather jacket, blue and purple tigh die shirt and jeans, not too baggy but certainly not skinny jeans, her hair wasn’t blonde thank god, and it wasn’t long, barely even touched her shoulders, her hair was usually brown, I used to think there was no way I could be any more into her until she started dying it red, and those green eyes, could stare into them for hours, in fact I have and still do

She looked haggard, her makeup was spoiled and her eyes were sore, she had been crying, over me, I can be a real cunt to the people I care about

When I opened the door she didn’t even say hi, she pushed her way into my room and pushed me aside, she was taller and stronger than me so not like I had a say, she threw her gear onto the couch and got to work, she made me turn off my Spotify so we could listen to some iron maiden music while she worked, from the concert she had talked me into going with her, we had a lot of fun and that was important, I’m no spell slinger but I hang out with a few and from what I understand all forms of magic use the emotion of the caster and potentially those of people they channelled, I guessed she was using the music to help her focus her feelings about me

She started with the grinding bowl and put a bunch of stuff into it, I didn’t know much about the ingredients but I recognised them as the stuff she used to make the salve that had saved my life on more than one occasion, after a few minutes the salve was ready and she started applying it, burnt like hell, always did when there was actually infection and produced a heavy black smoke similar to the fog that often surrounded by the beasts themselves. I couldn’t help but cuss and scream

“don’t be a child David, we have done this countless times and you should be used to it by now"

“yeah well usually it’s not eight separate entry wounds and they aren’t nearly as deep” I said fighting back the pain

“Well maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to go against some ghost dog that could bite your head off you asshole" I chuckled at that, she was right, I was quite happy to go against things well above my weight class but moaned and bitched at an old ointment

We watched together as the smoke continued to rise and fall from my wounds, Laney produced some vials from her bag and caught some of the smoke in it, alchemists needed ingredients that were symbolic as well as physical, it took a good ten minutes for the smoke to stop flowing, if Laney hadn’t got to my place as quick as she did I’d probably be a dead man, and she wasn’t going to let me forget that

“you are lucky I checked my phone, if I hadn’t well" her tone as she trailed off suggested she felt as lucky as I did that she picked up

“Yeah, I figured you were avoiding me after" she cut me off

“After you ditched me so you and your stupid sword could go three rounds with Tripod?” I grimaced at the insult to Mortimer and I could feel him do the same, I didn’t know it back then but I was soul bound to that weapon which meant we could sense each other, he didn’t talk to me exactly but I knew what he was thinking and he was not happy to see Laney

“yeah let’s go with that, I’m sorry about that" she didn’t really accept my apology but just moved on

“if you think I’m gonna ignore you just because you are a shitty friend" she said as she applied some more salve to be safe and tightened it with fresh bandages “ill always pick up, if I don’t you’ll end up dead or worse"

“worse?” I asked

“You’ll have to ask Mark and I know what kind of influence he is on you”

ah yes Mark ‘drugs first’ Howarth the other person who knew my secret, my best friend since childhood and the root of everything wrong with my life, but he’s a story for another day

“we aren’t done, I want to make you a potion for the blood loss, you mind grabbing me a beaker and my mixing jar?” I bought some alchemical equipment to keep around in my place for Laney from you guessed it... the markets, I kept it out of the view in the bathroom, you didn’t want people poking around shit purchased at the markets

I left the room and heard her draw some chalk across my floor, I would have been upset but with so much of my own blood smearing the place why bother? I came back in and to my surprise I didn’t see a chalk circle, at the time I thought I must have heard something else and mistaken it but Laney was in the process of pulling a trick on me

“sit in the swivel chair and shut up, I need you to be quiet for this so I can focus"

‘yes ma’am" I can be really good at doing what I was told, especially when it was her, I knew this was gonna take a while so I put my headphones on and got my Spotify ready, Laney came swiping over and picked up my phone, she started to type something onto the lock screen and then said “your password is seriously my first name?”

Fuck, she figured it out, she didn’t say anything, she just began to walk back to her station... with my phone, something was about to go down, there was tension in the room and Mortimer was letting me know he didn’t like it, suddenly music came from my headphones, some five finger death punch, that was another band we went to see, I remember it was raining constantly, I remember the two of us huddled together under an umbrella, she was holding me close that night, in hindsight that was the night I knew I saw her as more than a friend, I began playing it out in my head, I often did when listening to death punch, why didn’t I just lean in and kiss her then?

I knew exactly why, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my friendship with her, it wasn’t that she was an alchemist because at this point I could afford another, I didn’t do well in relationships, I didn’t do causal and I wasn’t good at the fallout from a serious relationship either, the kind of coward who just makes a quiet exit, I couldn’t afford to lose my friend like that, so that’s why I didn’t, not kissing her in the rain was the right thing to do, so why then could I never get my mind off of it?

After about an hour I was still thinking about it when the music stopped, she came over and handed me a beaker full of a brownish liquid, I took a smell

“dandelion and burdock”?

“I know it’s your favourite, now drink up David" she was being too sweet and there was a mischievous smile on her face, I didn’t like it but knew she wouldn’t use magic to fuck with me, so I downed it, wasn’t too bad, sort of dandelion and burdock mixed with iron, I felt a lot clearer and the pain in my arm began to subside

“Thanks, how much I owe you?”

“oh, I think I’ll be doing one for free" the smile intensified, I knew that smile well, some shit was about to go down, some real shit “in fact I think from now on it’s always gonna be free” before I had a chance to ask why she reached for the carpet below my chair sending the chair and myself diving to the floor, and that’s when I saw it hidden under the carpet, a chalk circle large enough to cover both the chair and me even if I stretched my legs out, clever witch

“I got you mother fucker” she yelled making no attempt to hide her glee, it all made sense now, she fact that she chose the music, the specific music she chose, exposing that she knew my password was her first name, she really was way to clever to be in my league

“you channelled me for the potion”

“More specifically your feelings towards me, and I’m so relieved, I was starting to think that you weren’t into me after the cinema, and yes, you should have kissed me after the concert” she was still smirking, I however was not

Channelling someone was a very intimate thing, to do it you had to understand the emotion coming from the subject, so Laney had done that with the music and the password trick, she got me onto the subject of my feelings for her, but you don’t just understand when you channel, you experience the feelings of the subject. I had just spent an hour fantasising about this woman and she had been there every second... I felt betrayed

“I think you should leave” I only half meant it, it was out there in the opening now, my love for her, my need for her, what she had done hadn’t changed that but it made me feel uncomfortable, I had never been channelled before and this was against my knowledge

“what? You are kidding me right? I finally got you to be open with me and even now you freeze up?”

“yes, you ‘got’ me to be open, that’s the problem” I was a mixture of relived that the truth was now out there and furious at the way it had happened, I grabbed and pulled on my hair to calm myself down “you invaded my mind and my soul, you dived into my private spaces and just started yanking on things that interested you, I tell you and Mark almost everything and the things I keep from you I do for a reason, that’s my choice and you took that from me” she wasn’t expecting that, I could tell, she looked hurt, like she was gonna start crying again, _fucking hell_ this is the one person that my life is supposed to be easy and in one evening had become ten pounds of difficult in a five pound bag

“You didn’t give me a choice, I have been trying to get you to just tell me for ages, trying to get you to be honest and make a move, fuck I even dyed my hair red because Mark said you like redheads" there were many reasons I wanted to kill Mark Howarth and now there was a new one on my list. This conversation was going to the one place I didn’t need it to, my fury was fading fast and I couldn’t fake it, I never in a million years thought that she had feelings for me, hell even if she did it wouldn’t have made a difference, I’d decided not to pursue that and I was going to stick by that, I looked at the post-it note and decided to be honest

“christ Wilson, what did you expect me to do? My life is complicated enough as it is without me risking losing you"

“losing me?” her own fury was fading, at least retreating below the surface.

“Yes, losing you, I have two real friends Laney, two people who know my secret and the life I lead, I’m not willing to lose either of them, Mark is easy but you, if we did this, and something went wrong, well I don’t do breakups well, and our friendship is what matters”

“are you fucking kidding me?” the fury came back to the surface, if she had been an expressionist rather than an alchemist she would be covered in fire and burning my dorm down “so that’s it, you aren’t willing to risk us so we are both just supposed to live a lie? Pretend we aren’t in love?”

“yes...” I said it uncertainly and regretted even before she sent an empty beaker crashing towards me, I threw myself to the ground, the beaker shattered against the wall sprinkling my back with glass

“Why are you such a fuck nugget" now she was in tears

_Fuck my life_ , I slowly rolled to myself sending most of the glass on my back sliding to the ground and then got to my feet, I slowly approached Laney and placed a hand on her shoulder

“Wils" I attempted to say her name but she interrupted

“fuck it" then she very quickly turned towards me and pushed me against the wall which caused some of the glass that remained on my back to push into it piercing my skin, that was a shock in itself not as big a shock as the tongue in my mouth

Laney had me against the wall shirtless and was passionately kissing me, being the weak-willed man I was I was kissing back, there was no hesitation, none of my usual doubt in this action, aside from yet more blood loss this was straight out of my fantasies, number ninety-seven in fact. I raised my hands and thought about pushing her away and ending this moment in heaven, but why? The ‘right thing’ had left both of us miserable, she was in tears and I was bleeding, that is where the right thing had got us, If I wanted to be with someone and I think I did it would have to be someone that I could be open with, totally and utterly honest and I had to feel comfortable doing it, with the sheer amount of insecurities I had that would take a miracle, and here she was, my miracle made flesh, I grabbed her by the waist just above the hips and pulled her close, she responded by grabbing my hands with her own and lowering them so I was gripping her behind, then she pulled me to her, she wanted to be in control and I could dig that, we stayed like that for a while, a few minutes as least, then after playfully nibbling on my ear she began kissing up and down my neck while she pulled my belt off, I responded by lifting her shirt off and fondling her perfect breasts, then she pulled me to the bed and threw me down, pulled off my trousers and practically launched onto of me like a tiger pouncing on its prey

She was awake before me the next morning, I tried to get out of bed but she pulled me back into the bed and pulled me close wrapping her legs around my own, she started kissing my neck again

And so the final aspect of my life that was simple was now as complicated as everything else, I was a stalker soul bound to a magical sword, I was a student of creative writing throwing money away, my best friend was a sorcerer who was out of his mind on drugs most of the time and my girlfriend was an alchemist who had seen the deeper darker side of me. On the plus side the old biddies at the market would stop trying to set me up with their grandkids

Mr Simms is indeed taken


End file.
